Poetry. Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Taren. Slovenian poet Toma alamun (1941-2014) is hailed as one of the most prominent poets of his generation, renowned for his impact on the Eastern European avant-garde movement. He authored over forty collections of poetry in Slovenian and English, experimenting with surrealism, polyphony, and absurdism. In this collection, which he was preparing before his recent death, he shows his mastery of sound, of uncomfortable twists of expectations, and reveals alleyways into humanity with sharp, minty lines amidst physical chaos and violence. alamun has helped shape an era of poetics with his electric imagination, refusal of boxed-in logic and custom, and sophisticated concision. His voice will linger on for years to come in the influence it has left with artists, writers, and readers. For a career born from a violent world, he has left a beautiful JUSTICE behind.
"By turns brutal and coy, gnomic and blunt, the Slovenian poet...insistently dismembers the world, only to slyly recreate and celebrate it." Publishers Weekly
"His poems will continue to defy categorization, but they will be remembered for the way they walked the tightrope between ecstasy and despair, the rational and the irrational, the sublime and the horrible." Paris Review
"He is too slippery to be compared to anything...His work is elegant and ironic and often surreal and lined with dark laughter but it can also be sharp and forbidding. Nothing is lost on him." The Guardian
"Salamun has exerted a great deal of influence on many younger poets...He's a world-class poet. He's easily the best poet of the Balkans, and one of the best of them all." Iowa Review"
Poetry. Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Taren. Slovenian poet Toma alamun (1941-2014) is hailed as one of the most prominent poets of his generation, renowned for his impact on the Eastern European avant-garde movement. He authored over forty collections of poetry in Slovenian and English, experimenting with surrealism, polyphony, and absurdism. In this collection, which he was preparing before his recent death, he shows his mastery of sound, of uncomfortable twists of expectations, and reveals alleyways into humanity with sharp, minty lines amidst physical chaos and violence. alamun has helped shape an era of poetics with his electric imagination, refusal of boxed-in logic and custom, and sophisticated concision. His voice will linger on for years to come in the influence it has left with artists, writers, and readers. For a career born from a violent world, he has left a beautiful JUSTICE behind.
"By turns brutal and coy, gnomic and blunt, the Slovenian poet...insistently dismembers the world, only to slyly recreate and celebrate it." Publishers Weekly
"His poems will continue to defy categorization, but they will be remembered for the way they walked the tightrope between ecstasy and despair, the rational and the irrational, the sublime and the horrible." Paris Review
"He is too slippery to be compared to anything...His work is elegant and ironic and often surreal and lined with dark laughter but it can also be sharp and forbidding. Nothing is lost on him." The Guardian
"Salamun has exerted a great deal of influence on many younger poets...He's a world-class poet. He's easily the best poet of the Balkans, and one of the best of them all." Iowa Review"
Tomaz Salamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published more than 40 books of poetry in Slovenia and is not only recognized as a leading figure of the Slovenian poetic avant-garde but is also considered one of the leading contemporary poets of Central Europe. In 1996 he became the Slovenian Cultural Attaché in New York, and lived in the U.S. on and off until his death in 2014. His honors include the Preseren Fund Prize, the Jenko Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a visiting Fulbright to Columbia University, and a fellowship to the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He also has served as Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Consulate in New York. Besides having his work appear in numerous journals internationally, he has had over twelve collections of poetry published in English, including THE FOUR QUESTIONS OF MELANCHOLY: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (White Pine Press, 1996), BLACKBOARDS (Saturnalia Press, 2004), POKER (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007), THERE'S THE HAND AND THERE'S THE ARID CHAIR (Counterpath Press, 2009), ON THE TRACKS OF WILD GAME (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), and the posthumous collection, JUSTICE (Black Ocean, 2015). His poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages around the world, numbering over 80 volumes.
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